At some of the country's most selective colleges, one study has shown, having an alum parent boosts the applicant's probability of acceptance by 45 percentage points. That is, if one candidate has a 30% chance of admission, an applicant with the exact same academic record and extracurricular activities but also a parent who attended the school as an undergraduate would have a 75% chance.

Both sides in our debate agree that legacy admissions once were used to give preference almost exclusively to white, male students. Today, however, supporters of legacy admissions point out that diversity has become so well-established on campus that the legacies themselves are multicultural. And the preference being shown to a few, they say, is more about boosting alumni giving and school spirit.

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The Wall Street Journal

Its critics, meanwhile, argue that the custom is still discriminatory. To base college admissions on any criteria other than merit, they say, runs counter to America's democratic principles.

Taking the pro-legacy position is Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus and university professor of public service at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Making the opposing case is Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, in New York City who edited the 2010 book "Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions."

Yes: It's Good for the Schools

By Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Many colleges look favorably on applications from children of alumni—and they should. Legacy admissions, used judiciously, are good for schools, and for all of the students.

Half a century ago, it is true, seats in the freshman class would often pass from one generation of white men to the next without much regard for merit.

But the world of college admissions has changed dramatically. The doors to college are open wider than ever. The admissions process is more democratic and largely a meritocracy.

Admission decisions, though, can't just go by the numbers. Data can be unreliable. High-school grades and standardized exams have flaws; letters of recommendation are subjective and tell us as much about the authors as the candidates.

The result is that a lot of factors get thrown into the pot as admissions officers try to create balanced classes with students who have particular talents and a variety of backgrounds. Whether an applicant is a legacy should be one of those factors, because it is so important to sustaining two qualities at the core of the college experience: school spirit and a lasting sense of community.

Like other admitted students, alumni children must have the necessary academic achievements. But they also come to campus ready to embrace the institution from the moment they arrive. They bring unique qualities of tradition, loyalty and pride of place. Many students and their families, not just legacies, are proud to be Tigers, Elis, Colonials, Lions or Longhorns. They wear the sweatshirts, they display the logos. But legacies are raised with such pride from infancy, like mother's milk.

As recently as 25 years ago, legacy admissions still arguably favored white wealthy children. But the alumni rolls of U.S. colleges grow daily more diverse. African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and students from around the world compose today's college classes. Alumni children are increasingly multicultural. Thus, seeking diversity by including the children of alumni is a positive, not a negative.

Legacies also make recruiting easier. For every college, building the class is a full-time competitive job. Most schools scramble to find enough qualified candidates each year. Because legacies who get accepted do tend to enroll, they are thus a valuable building block.

Ensuring that a portion of each freshman class has a particularly close connection to the school also helps keep alumni giving strong. Not all "giving" is in dollars and cents. Creating community is spiritual, not material. Speaking well of one's alma mater, referring applicants, involvement in campaigns, mentoring interns, working with faculty on research, sports-ticket subscriptions, etc., all add to a university's worth.

Yes, accepting a legacy student displaces someone else. But at every school where more students apply than are accepted, each person admitted displaces someone else. And those who are rejected almost always go on to attend and graduate from another institution. To say that it is discrimination for a college to accept one applicant over another because the school is looking for specific characteristics is to challenge the very concept of affirmative action.

We need not exaggerate the cost of legacies nor inflate their benefits: They are only a small part of the admissions pie, and they warrant neither alarm nor undue celebration. They help bridge an institution's past and present. They represent tradition and underscore the history of an institution and modestly acknowledge what the present owes to the founders.

In an already highly regulated environment, nothing about legacy admissions calls for federal intervention. There are more than 4,000 colleges in the U.S., and only about a hundred accept less than 50% of their applicants. When colleges have enough applicants to make real choices in admissions, the mosaic of candidates is selected even as many of apparently equal quality go on to happily matriculate at alternative institutions. There is no simple formula that results in perfect equity. No student is exactly the same as another.

The criteria for a sound legacy admissions policy are moderation and balance: Accept a qualified few; use judgment; find talent and readiness; diversity is imperative.

In other words, the criteria are the same as they are for musicians, mathematicians, basketball players, thespians, equestrians, urbanites and country mice, locals and internationals. Legacies should be treated no worse.

Prof. Trachtenberg is president emeritus and university professor of public service at George Washington University. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

No: It Hurts the Deserving

By Richard D. Kahlenberg

Legacy preference in college admissions is one of the few issues on which liberals and conservatives should be able to agree. Giving special privileges to a group of relatively advantaged students based on where their parents went to college makes no sense, whether you come at the question from the political left or the right.

Liberals, concerned about fairness, should balk at providing affirmative action for students who are disproportionately white and wealthy. For conservatives, legacies violate the articulated principle that America ought to be a merit-based society rather than an entitlement society. Little wonder, then, that 75% of Americans oppose legacy preferences.

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RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG 'Discrimination based on parentage and ancestry is a deeply un-American practice.
Halley Potter

Still, preferences for alumni offspring are employed at almost three-quarters of selective public and private research universities and virtually all selective liberal-arts colleges.

Defenders suggest that legacy status is merely a "tiebreaker" among equally qualified candidates. However, it is more than that. Princeton University scholar Thomas Espenshade and colleagues found that, among applicants to elite colleges, legacy status was worth the equivalent of scoring 160 points higher on the SAT (on a scale of 400 to 1600).

But even if the legacy boost were a minor factor in the college's decision, it's a form of discrimination based on ancestry. Would we say discrimination against Latino candidates is permissible because it's "one factor" of many?

Legacy preferences began after World War I, part of an effort to curtail the enrollment of immigrant students, particularly Jews, at Ivy League colleges.

While it is true that legacies today are more racially and ethnically diverse than in the 1950s, they are still disproportionately white. One study found that underrepresented minorities make up 12.5% of the applicant pool at selective colleges and universities but only 6.7% of the legacy-applicant pool. And this racial disparity is likely to continue for legacies in the next generation.

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Defenders of legacy preferences today say they are necessary to encourage alumni donations, but there is little good evidence to support the claim. The most comprehensive study of the issue is a 2010 analysis published by the Century Foundation that examined alumni giving at the nation's top 100 research universities from 1998 to 2007. Researchers compared giving at the 75% of these institutions that provide legacy preference against the quarter that do not. The authors, once they controlled for the wealth of an institution's alumni, found "no statistically significant evidence of a causal relationship between legacy preference policies and total alumni giving."

The study also examined giving trends at seven universities that eliminated legacy preference policies during this period. The authors found "no short term measurable reduction in alumni giving as a result of abolishing legacy preferences."

Some argue that if a Yale applicant gets bumped aside for a legacy, he or she is still likely to attend a great college. But discrimination based on parentage and ancestry is an aristocratic and deeply un-American practice. Would anyone seriously argue that it's acceptable for Yale to discriminate against applicants who are black or Muslim because, after all, they can attend another good university?

Part of the genius of the American experiment is that we have tried to follow Thomas Jefferson's dictate, that America should develop a "natural aristocracy" based on "virtue and talent," not an "artificial aristocracy" based on hereditary status. What kind of lesson do we teach teenage students applying to college when a university policy expressly suggests it's important where their mother and father went to college?

Public and private universities receive enormous public subsidies because institutions of higher education are supposed to serve the public interest. There is broad consensus among Americans, however, that legacy preferences contravene the public interest by undercutting merit and discriminating based on lineage. Higher education should acknowledge what the public has long recognized and end this anachronistic practice.

Mr. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is editor of "Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions." He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

Corrections & Amplifications The Massachusetts Institute of Technology does not take legacy status into account in admissions decisions. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said MIT does consider legacies.

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